Ryan Coogler's Sinners is 1930s Mississippi, twins Smoke and Stack — both Michael B. Jordan — coming home to open a juke joint. There are vampires. That is not really what the movie is about.
Smoke is the stoic one, war in him. Stack is the charmer with too many secrets. The monsters have teeth and familiar faces. Grief, bloodline, what this country buried and called soil.
It is not a clean horror movie and I did not need it to be. Autumn Durald Arkapaw's light looks like molasses and gossip. The music — blues, gospel, those strings — does more than most dialogue. Miles Caton as Sammie plays a song that moves the whole room on screen. I felt that one in my body.
This movie does not pause to explain Blackness. Juke joint, side-eye, how people sit in silence. That is the power. Hailee Steinfeld, Glynn Turman, Aunjanue Ellis. Two post-credit scenes. I had questions when the lights came up, which is better than a tidy moral.
Some of it is doing too much. So are we. I still wanted the soundtrack in the car after.
